CYBER VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS

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ABBREVIATIONS <strong>AND</strong> ACRONYMS APC CEDAW ICT IGF ISPs OSCE PTSD SNS UGC VAWG Association for Progressive Communications Committee on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women Information and Communication Technology Internet Governance Forum Internet Service Provider(s) Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Social Networking Service/Site User Generated Content Violence Against Women and Girls
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Millions of women and girls around the world are subjected to deliberate violence because of their gender. Violence against women and girls (VAWG) knows no boundaries, cutting across borders, race, culture and income groups, profoundly harming victims, people around them, and society as a whole. 1 The growing reach of the Internet, the rapid spread of mobile information and communications technologies (ICTs) and the wide diffusion of social media have presented new opportunities and enabled various efforts to address VAWG. 2 However, they are also being used as tools to inflict harm on women and girls. Cyber-VAWG is emerging as a global problem with serious implications for societies and economies around the world. The statistics pose risks to the peace and prosperity for all enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, and, in particular, to the goals of inclusive, sustainable development that puts gender equality and the empowerment of women as key to its achievement. Writing this report has, in some sense, been a race to keep up with breaking news, as girl after girl and woman after woman, has come forward to expose physical and verbal attacks on them: teenage girls driven to suicide by online trolling; an airline passenger using her cell phone to record and report physical and sexual harassment from a male co-passenger; an actress publicly responding to targeted online hate speech against her; a former Major League Baseball pitcher using doxing 3 to identify people responsible for “Twitter troll” posts with obscene, sexually explicit comments about his teenage daughter. A current Twitter hashtag 4 shows just how rough it is being a woman on the Internet in North America. Women of the Global South also experience various acts of cyber VAWG, but these are usually less well-publicized. High profile incidences attract public attention and tort law responses: aTwitter troll was jailed 5 in September 2014 and a porn site operator sentenced to 18 years in in prison in February 2015 6 . One person was suspended from his community college, and another lost a part-time job with the New York Yankees when the doxing case involving a former Major League Baseball pitcher was made public. In May 2015, a Toronto sports reporter was verbally assaulted while broadcasting live at a professional soccer league game. Following public outrage, the main 1
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Page 4 and 5: Acknowledgements This Report has be
Page 8 and 9: aggressor lost his high paying job
Page 10 and 11: “… the landscape of gender-base
Page 12 and 13: issues of prevention, redress and s
Page 14 and 15: “We hear about wake-up calls, but
Page 16 and 17: “For women, the basic problems ar
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Page 20 and 21: Source: Latest data from Pew Resear
Page 22 and 23: Opinions on the Internet “Agree
Page 24 and 25: France is among the countries where
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Page 28 and 29: “The Internet is a forum where pe
Page 30 and 31: BOX 1: RECENT CYBER VAWG TARGETS Vi
Page 32 and 33: and harassment. This included threa
Page 34 and 35: SENSITIZATION Prevent VAWG through
Page 36 and 37: • ‘Applying Social Media Tools
Page 38 and 39: individual must play in self-regula
Page 40 and 41: When we talk about safeguards, we m
Page 42 and 43: ecome aware of its presence on thei
Page 44 and 45: market app stores - the explosion i
Page 46 and 47: The emerging Internet of Things wil
Page 48 and 49: were all aware that a crime had bee
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Page 52 and 53: violence against women represents a
Page 54 and 55: public from violent or abusive beha
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• Bridges, A., & Wosnitzer, R. (2
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• Messina, Lenlen. (2010). “Vio
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54
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9 http://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we
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44 https://globalvoicesonline.org/2
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88 http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sit
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2015 Photo credits:Shutterstock
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CYBER VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN AND GIRLS

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